I looked up the OP's page. The guy's posted a grand total of 22 times. Of those 22 posts, 4 are threads that he started. Each of those 4 threads are seeking-advice threads. All of the threads he started are from between June-Oct of this year.

Now, setting aside whether or not you would have GM-ed in a similar fashion or if you would have sided with the player, this person is either new to the boards or new to actively participating with the community.

I know the Internet loves its snark, and I'm as guilty of forum-sarcasm as the next person, and if we're posting on these boards we're all passionate about this hobby. We all have our opinions on what styles of play work for us and what doesn't.

However, before we automatically assume that the only way a player could be dissatisfied with a session's outcome is that the GM is running roughshod over the players, MIGHT it not be better to speak to the info we DO have rather than speculating about what we don't know?

Instead of assuming that "Silence proves guilt", might it not be reasonable to assume that every poster doesn't check these boards every week, let alone every day?

Might it not be better to give the OP, or any poster, the benefit of the doubt?

Playing preferences aside, don't we all want to see an ever-successful Pathfinder RPG?

'Cause I don't know that this thread would make a persuasive recruitment tool...

Actually it may very well be that he simply went away for a few weeks... That IS what his posting history shows. He certainly hasn't posted since his last post in this thread. And this thread was started after a long hiatus in the first place.

'Cause I don't know that this thread would make a persuasive recruitment tool...

While I agree with a lot of what you say, looking to any internet forum as a recruitment tool for just about anything is, imho, a futile exercise. Messageboards, and forums, in my experience, are hotbeds of anti-social rhetoric, miscommunication, and misunderstandings.

It's entirely possible the OP got whatever reassurance they wanted after some early posts, and decided they didn't need to come back and check anything else out. Perfectly understandable.

He did post in this thread 3 times, and the question of what was taken was asked before any vitriol came down. All he would say is that it was NOT her bonded item.

But in any case, he posted a question in this forum @ 8:33 then left forever @ 8:51 the same day after only 5 other post. Thus, he didn’t wait too long for advice and the snark didn’t start for several hours afterwards, thus he had plenty of time to ward off the (admittedly) rather increasingly strident & querulous posts with some more info.

So yeah, there has been some assumptions and snark (but honestly, not that much snark or vitriol) here but most of those could have been warded off by more info. Before any snark started it was clear others wanted to know what was taken, but he choose not to divulge this.

You wake up in a loincloth with no gear is a really dangerous plot device to get into. Yeah a classic module A4 used it to some good effect but in general people don't like feeling powerless and vulnerable even by proxy and taking away gear is a big no-no for many players.

In some groups you'll have the maturity level to deal with being powered down for a session in order to tell an interesting narrative but for many people being less powerful for an extended period is pretty much a recipe for intense frustration.

My 14th level group just finished what was, I believe, a 4 month long IRL slog through a keep after they were ambushed while astral projecting.

At the end of a long day full of combat we decided to try and accomplish one last objective and had a high level wizard ally astral project us to fight a CR ~17 enemy in the astral plane. When we woke up after the fight we were reduced to undercloths and locked in antimagic'd adamantine cells, with walls of force just outside of the antimagic area to support the adamantine cells. Turned out there'd been a coup in the tower while he (the wizard ally) was helpless. We were lumped in with him.

We had to get out of the cells, then battle our way through the towers 4 levels teeming with both moderate (~10-15th) level wizards, golems, clockwork soldiers, apprentice wizards armed with CL 9 magic missile wands, magus, and so forth. Made worse by the fact that our equipment had been split up between our captives, and was then used against us. This at the end of a day of adventuring. I think by the time we got out of the tower we'd fought through a 10 or 12 more encounters, putting the total for the day at ~16.

The real kicker was most of our charged items (staves, wands, potions, rods) were either used up or nearly so by the time we recovered them, and we didn't even recover all of our combat gear.

Sounds like OP players need a similar experience to make them realize how lucky they are.

Why do you keep throwing around what-if scenarios to argue the extreme one-side of the argument? I can only say "assumes the GM isn't being a jerk" so many ways.

Huh?

I wasn't rebutting that. I was rebutting your contention that losing a cherished item will invariably be a good thing as it can be an impetus for character growth.

Just because something "can" doesn't mean that it "will." There are rules for the way that characterization and plotting go and this is regardless of the goodness or badness of GM and likewise the goodness or badness of players.

Take, for example, Scrooge's goldpiece. There were likely a thousand other golden guineas in London at the time, and indeed, most of them would probably be worth more to coin collectors because they hadn't been incessantly rubbed between a miser's fingers. Scrooge does lose it, and there's a lot of character growth and change from that, but really him being willing to part with the goldpiece to buy the giant turkey and moreover trust that the random kid in the street won't just run off with it is the symbol for his character change as a whole.

If it had been pickpocketed from him in the first act and he had to go to the butcher's himself and write a check, after of course haggling for the bird? It wouldn't be as good for the story.

Other times? While the player and character of Frodo might decide he wants to keep the One Ring, fortunately the GM has the NPC Smeagol/Gollum to bite off his finger then fortuitously fall into the volcano while crying, "My Precious!"

Plot tokens are like that.

As for the OP, to play devil's advocate, yeah, there are times players can get needlessly obsessed about certain character props and the GM just starts to roll their eyes. It happens.

I wasn't rebutting that. I was rebutting your contention that losing a cherished item will invariably be a good thing as it can be an impetus for character growth.

I never said it was invariably a good thing. I said that it doesn't warrant a "take my dice and go home" reaction.

Al of your examples are great from a storytelling perspective and given your Pathfinder contributions, I can see why you'd take such an approach. However, while RPGs are a shared storytelling experience, many players reject rigid adherence to plot as railroading, and if you force a GM to adhere to the player's pre-determined plot device, you're railroading the GM in your own way.

Back in 2e days, I was a plot-heavy GM and loved intricate backstories. Years later, I discovered that the unexpected, unplanned twists & turns were often better than the originally envisioned plot. This was true for story, campaign longevity, and PC character development. YMMV.

He did post in this thread 3 times, and the question of what was taken was asked before any vitriol came down. All he would say is that it was NOT her bonded item.

But in any case, he posted a question in this forum @ 8:33 then left forever @ 8:51 the same day after only 5 other post. Thus, he didn’t wait too long for advice and the snark didn’t start for several hours afterwards, thus he had plenty of time to ward off the (admittedly) rather increasingly strident & querulous posts with some more info.

So yeah, there has been some assumptions and snark (but honestly, not that much snark or vitriol) here but most of those could have been warded off by more info. Before any snark started it was clear others wanted to know what was taken, but he choose not to divulge this.

He posted, got advice and left... maybe he has a game to play? :)

The current crop of posters on this thread are fairly reasonable. Back up a page or so and you can watch the sarcasm dripping off one poster. And these posts are being "favorited" by others. I am not "for" or "against" the sides being expressed here. I do agree with BPorter that there is simply not enough information to say "jerk DM" or not. But some of the posts are, imo, on the border of Paizo's admonishment "Don't be a jerk".

They want these boards to be friendly. I agree with them. Passion about a topic is fine, we are all passionate about the game or we wouldn't bother posting here. But we don't need to flay the hide off anyone while we're at it. Even if it has been "in absentia". We have all been guilty, at one point or another in one thread or another, of being a bit too... involved with a topic. Still, when you are posting repetitively, sarcastically, without adding anything new to a conversation, why bother? It should be for some reason other than "because I can" or "because I enjoy making fun of somebody". Because it doesn't really add anything to the conversation. It doesn't prove how clever we are. It doesn't make our point better than simply stating it. It just gets tiring to read and drags the discussion down to a level where people will drift off and quit reading / thinking about a thread. *shrug* Maybe that's a good thing?